Hometown Sheriffs to Meet with Boehner on Immigration

The majority of local sheriffs in House Speaker John Boehner’s Ohio district are heading in to meet with the top house lawmaker’s office on Wednesday, Breitbart News has learned.

Six out of seven sheriffs of the counties that comprise Boehner’s eighth congressional district of Ohio will meet with Boehner’s district director Ryan Day on Wednesday at 2 PM local time. 

“The purpose of the meeting is to get the congressman, the Speaker of the House, together with the sheriffs of his district,” Sheriff Richard K. Jones (pictured) of Butler County, Ohio, said in a phone interview with Breitbart News on Tuesday afternoon. “We’re basically asking that the Speaker not bring this [any immigration bills] out of [conference] committee. If it goes to [conference] committee, the Senate’s version, we do not want this version that the Senate sent over to the House to come out of the House on immigration. 

“What we’re trying to accomplish is to put pressure on the House not to bring this bill out of the House,” Jones continued. “Law enforcement, sheriffs, around the country, a majority of us, border states and non-border states, we’re having issues when they come into the United States with the crime, the drugs, the same old thing.”

Jones gave several examples of crimes that illegal immigrants have committed in Butler County, part of Boehner’s district, in recent years. 

A 9-year-old girl was molested by an illegal, then he left and went back to Mexico. It took us six to seven years to get this individual back and he left her to run home naked in the neighborhood after he molested her. He’s in prison after we got him back. There was an elderly lady where her house was broken into by an illegal who molested her then in the process made her go take a shower and clean up then drive him to the ATM machine. He was illegal. There was a lady who was hit by a vehicle and knocked down. And she’s in a wheelchair. I could go on. There was another lady who was killed by a group of illegals and they left the scene and it goes on. There’s killings, there’s stabbings, drugs have increased coming in from Mexico. This is just Butler County, Ohio. In Ohio, it’s totally out of control, the drugs that are coming in, the killings.

Jones said he has been to the border twice with the sheriff of Cochise County, AZ, who serves with him in the National Sheriff’s Association. “We’ve started seeing that our jails are filling up with people who are committing these crimes, getting out, re-committing crimes, getting out,” Jones said. “Then they would flee; they would leave. Then we started having them to where they were committing heinous crimes.”

While Boehner’s district is about as far from America’s border with Mexico as one can get, Jones said that hardly means illegal immigration and the resulting crime and economic depravity do not affect the Speaker’s hometown. “The border sheriffs will tell you they come across the border but they don’t stay for a minute,” Jones said of illegal immigrant problems in Boehner’s district. “They shift them back into the inner parts of the United States.”

Jones said illegal immigrants are accessing welfare benefits in Boehner’s district, too. “Our welfare, just in Butler County, Ohio, alone–there’s 88 counties in Ohio–in Butler County, Ohio, in our county alone, we spend $8 million a month on welfare,” he said. “That’s not all for people who are here illegally. But a large portion of it goes to them and their kids who are over here in the United States.”

The local economy is not getting any better, either, he said, adding that illegal immigration is not helping out-of-work Americans in the eighth congressional district of Ohio. “We can’t buy a job here in Ohio and we’re the fastest or second-fastest growing county in Ohio,” Jones said. “There are no jobs. And what jobs there are, we don’t want them going to people who don’t deserve them. We want them going to our people coming out of the military and citizens of the United States.” 

According to Jones, he and his law enforcement colleagues are fed up with these issues. “I’ve been in media all over the country for the past seven to eight years voicing this opinion and the sheriffs here in this district, we’ve all had about enough,” he stated. “We want this to stop.” 

“We don’t want it to come out of the House,” he continued. “The Senate, like I said, they’re all running for president of the United States and the Republicans have sold people out. It’s a pretty hot topic here in Ohio and across the nation with other sheriffs. So that’s why we’re having this meeting here tomorrow.”

Jones does not know whether Boehner will slow or halt immigration efforts in the House in the wake of Lee Stranahan’s investigative report on the sudden spike of asylum requests at the border and Fox News’ follow-on reports about the Obama administration’s decision to expend taxpayer resources to house such illegal immigrants in hotels. Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) has called for the House to drop any and all immigration bills until the asylum issue is addressed and stopped. 

“We’ve never heard from the Speaker,” Jones said of the issue. “We’re going to find out tomorrow. We believe that this is the kind of pressure that stops it. Our congressman happens to be the Speaker of the House and he represents all the United States and all the Congress. 

“He’s got different districts that he’s got to deal with. But the Republicans and the Tea Party Republicans in the House–people are watching,” he continued. “Ronald Reagan said ‘you dance with those that burn ya,’ and buddy, you better remember where you came from.” 

While Boehner himself will not be attending this meeting on Wednesday, the Speaker has been more receptive than House Majority Leader Eric Cantor. For weeks, Cantor has ignored requests for a meeting from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) National Council president Chris Crane to discuss immigration legislation.

Boehner’s spokesman Michael Steel told Breitbart News that the Speaker “hopes to” meet with local sheriffs soon and is upset he could not on Wednesday. Boehner has still kept the door open to a potential conference with the Senate bill and a group of House immigration bills, but in a letter Boehner wrote to the local sheriffs, he said he has a “shared commitment” with them “to stopping the Senate bill.”

“I look forward to keeping the lines of communication open with you and other law enforcement leaders in our community as the immigration reform debate unfolds across our country,” Boehner wrote. “Fixing our broken immigration laws through a step-by-step, common-sense approach that begins with enforcement is critical to creating an environment for economic growth and private-sector job creation in our country, and I share your commitment to ensuring Washington at long last gets it right.”

Jones said the sheriffs in Boehner’s district represent the viewpoint of a majority of sheriffs nationwide. “This is indicative of about the whole United States,” he said. “Sheriffs have had about all they can take. We’re tired of people in the federal government saying the borders are safe. They’re not. I’ve been there. They’re not safe. And then here inside the United States are the gangs, the killings, and the drug cartels.”